Detroit-based painter Louise Jones (aka Ouizi) and SUNY Purchase professor and sculptor Rachel Owens have made new works for Untitled that merge environmental and spiritual concerns into poignant works that memorialize the seemingly insignificant and highlight their importance in revealing our impact on the world. Using traditionally feminine palettes of pinks and electric pastels, these two artists urge viewers to consider their place in our contemporary culture and the history of the world. Each artist has been recognized with commissions at museums and galleries, and we are excited to present them in juxtaposition for the first time.

About her artistic progression, Jones states "When I moved to Detroit in 2014, I was just learning about the seasons.  I grew up in Santa Monica, a place where the weather rarely fluctuates more than 10 degrees from 70.  All the people are carefully put together, the buildings meticulously maintained and pastel. The first time I saw a Crocus blooming out of the snow, it felt like a religious experience.  People warned me about Michigan winters, but I love a challenge and I was prepared. During this period I was making paintings that were supposed to speak about spirituality.  Experiencing seasons for the first time felt like discovering a higher power for me. I didn’t grow up with religion.  I was looking for something to make art about, and a deep connection that felt like being in love. I found this at the time in flowers. Often, it takes a long time to see the things that are right in front of us, rather than what we wish to perceive. Making paintings feels like honoring that which often is overlooked - reassessing one's first perspective, and making small, fleeting moments immortalized."

Louise Jones (neé Chen) is a second-generation Chinese American, born in Los Angeles in 1988. Her artistic practice centers around painting, while her background is in drawing and printmaking at University of California Santa Cruz. Her work first gained recognition in 2014 after moving to Detroit, where she began painting murals of flowers on buildings and local businesses under the name “Ouizi.” To date, her murals have been displayed in museums and public spaces throughout the US and the world, including the Henry Ford Cancer Pavilion, the North Carolina Museum of Art, and the Smithsonian Archives of American Art. She is a 2023 recipient of the Kresge Artist Fellowship. ZieherSmith presented her solo show debut in Nashville in 2022. She currently works in the public and private sectors simultaneously; completing floral mural commissions in addition to works on canvas inspired by the breadth of human impact and culture.

About her new body of work, Rachel Owens elaborates: "During my recent sabbatical from SUNY Purchase, I have been working with the New York State Museum in Albany and their important but under-documented collection of specimen from the world’s oldest known fossilized forest to build a database of 3D scanned specimen from the Gilboa Forest and adjacent objects. My resulting artworks are sculptures that merge casts of the stumps, which I have 3D printed from the scanned files, with body casts from my own self as well as studio assistants. As feet, ears, fingers and breasts emerge from the rocky surface, the viewer considers the connection between ourselves and the plant species on the planet. Across time and space, the connections have us consider both our insignificance as well as great impact on this world."

Engaged in broad fields of practice from public art and traditional gallery work to activist based Community Theater, Owens tackles issues of hierarchical social conditions, environmental destruction, consumption and the points where these things intersect. Her work has been commissioned for public projects both in the US and internationally including The X Krasnoyarsk Biennial, RU; Austrian Cultural Forum, NY; The Frist Museum, TN;  Socrates Sculpture Park, LIC; and the New Museum Window, NY among others.  Her solo museum project, The Hypogean Tip commissioned for The Housatonic Museum of Art in Bridgeport CT subsequently traveled to The Sugarhill Museum in NYC. 

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